Microsoft is going to add support for the VP9 and WebM open-source video codec in the near future to its Windows 10-exclusive Microsoft Edge browser. The codec was originally created by Google and is being used in its Chrome browser, along with Mozilla's Firefox.

Microsoft says that VP9 on Microsoft Edge will support both software and hardware decoding, depending on the device, and because of this, the support for the codec will be placed under "an experimental flag" while the company works with others to add more support for hardware decoding. It added:

"Our initial VP9 implementation in Microsoft Edge will support adaptive streaming using Media Source Extensions, and will be detectable using the MediaSource.isTypeSupported() API. It will be specifically targeted to meet the needs of websites that use VP9 to deliver video in combination with MP4/AAC or other audio codecs already supported by Microsoft. We are working on future support for VP9 for media tags and local playback, as well as considering support for additional audio formats likely to be used with VP9 such as Opus."

VP9 support will be added in the new future via an update for Windows 10 for the members of the Windows Insider program. Microsoft says that it is looking to expand support for more video and audio codecs in Windows 10, and is currently evaluating the OGG, Opus, and Vorbis formats.